. Thackerayana;. ve this mystery, for which the candid reader isreferred to our next. That I have a prejudice against runninginto debt, and drunkenness, and disorderly life, and againstquackery and falsehood in my profession, I own, and that I liketo have a laugh at those pretenders in it who write confidentialnews about fashion and politics for provincial gobemouches ; but Iam not aware of feeling any malice in describing this weakness, orof doing anything wrong in exposing the former vices. Havethey never existed amongst literary men ? Have their talentsnever been urged as a plea for improvi
. Thackerayana;. ve this mystery, for which the candid reader isreferred to our next. That I have a prejudice against runninginto debt, and drunkenness, and disorderly life, and againstquackery and falsehood in my profession, I own, and that I liketo have a laugh at those pretenders in it who write confidentialnews about fashion and politics for provincial gobemouches ; but Iam not aware of feeling any malice in describing this weakness, orof doing anything wrong in exposing the former vices. Havethey never existed amongst literary men ? Have their talentsnever been urged as a plea for improvidence, and their very faultsadduced as a consequence of their genius ? The only moral thatI, as a writer, wished to hint in the descriptions against which youprotest, was, that it was the duty of a literary man, as well as anyother, to practise regularity and sobriety, to love his family, andto pay his tradesmen. Nor is the picture I have drawn a cari-cature which I condescend to, any more than it is a wilful and. Sir Hector SOCIAL ESTIMATION OF LITERARY MEN. 161 insidious design on my part to flatter the non-literary class. Ifit be a caricature, it is the result of a natural perversity of vision,not of an artful desire to mislead ; but my attempt was to tell thetruth, and I meant to tell it not unkindly. I have seen the book-seller whom Bludyer robbed of his books: I have carried money,and from a noble brother man-of-letters, to some one not unlikeShandon in prison, and have watched the beautiful devotion ofhis wife in that dreary place. Why are these things not to bedescribed, if they illustrate, as they appear to me to do, thatstrange and awful struggle of good and wrong which takes placein our hearts and in the world ? It may be that I worked out mymoral ill, or it may be possible that the critic of the Examiner fails in apprehension. My efforts as an artist come perfectlywithin his province as a censor; but when Mr. Examiner saysof a gentleman that he is stooping to flatte
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